Dewey & LeBoeuf seeks $13 million for LA Dodgers bankruptcy case

Former Dewey & LeBoeuf bankruptcy attorney Bruce Bennett is looking to be compensated for his work with another bankrupt organization: the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Bennett, who led the legal team that represented the Major League Baseball franchise during its Chapter 11 restucturing, billed the Dodgers for almost $13 million, which includes a “modest” $500,000 bonus, according to court papers filed Tuesday.

In those papers, Bennett noted that his legal team was never compensated for staying at Dewey to handle the case even as many other partners jumped ship, saying that “the restructuring attorneys from Dewey who represented the Dodgers remained with the firm until the very end–even after it became clear that they would not be paid for the exhaustive (and exhausting) services they were rendering.”

In March, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt agreed to sell the team to Guggenheim Baseball Management, a consortium that includes former Los Angeles Lakers star Magic Johnson. The record-breaking $2 billion sale came after a contentious year, in which baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced that Major League Baseball would seize control of the cash-strapped team, and subsequently nixed a multibillion-dollar television deal that would have helped to keep the Dodgers solvent.

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog reports that Dewey collected most of the Dodgers’ legal bill before the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May. Bennett reportedly will have some say over the distribution of the bonus money; however, the Dodgers’ legal team did sign on to a Dewey clawback settlement that shields former partners from lawsuits connected with the firm’s demise in exchange for a portion of their 2011 and 2012 compensation.